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  The Rainbird Pattern catalogues a search for a highly professional kidnapper: a man who deals in public figures, but makes sure that no publicity attaches to the crime. The result is a secret and fascinating race between the calculating professionals and a bumbling and very unprofessional pair of amateurs, to find the kidnapper.

  The book is not, however, a commonplace tale of amateur versus professional sleuth. These amateurs deal in the occult, the search is both on land and in the world of the “spirits”. The conclusion is unpredictable and weird. An unusual book for the author and apart from its arbitary and imposed ending, a coldly fascinating experience.

  The Rainbird Pattern

  VICTOR

  CANNING

  The

  Rainbird

  Pattern

  Copyright © 1972 by Victor Canning

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Canning, Victor.

  The Rainbird pattern.

  I. Title.

  PZ3.C1636Rai3 [PR6005.A486] 823’.9’12

  ISBN 0-688-00155-6 72-12854

  For Diana with Love

  The Rainbird Pattern

  CHAPTER ONE

  ON THE LOW centre table in the hall was a wide, shallow bowl full of blue and pink hyacinths, stiff, heraldic, unnatural flowers. At the side of the bowl was a small washleather bag, a jeweller’s optic and a pair of fine balances. In a little while now, Bush thought, somebody was going to walk in from the cold March night and check the contents of the bag. Whoever it was would come by car. It was now two o’clock at night. Outside the floodlights swamped the approach road to the Officers’ Mess building of the Army Aviation Centre with a sallow primrose light. The helicopter, stripped of radio, was waiting a hundred yards away on the football field. The pilot would be sitting there, blowing on his cold hands, briefed to follow instructions absolutely; one deviation from his orders, one irresistible spurt of heroics and he would be axed.

  Bush moved round the table to the fireplace and lit a cigarette. Above the mantel was a coloured portrait of the Queen. The fireplace was masked with a great fan of green decorative paper. He noticed that one of the lower folds had been singed by a carelessly thrown cigarette. Bush had been trained to notice things and then lodge them in his memory until they were needed. He was a plump man, firmly in his thirties, with thinning brown hair, hazel eyes and a rubicund complexion that never took tan. His usual expression was mild, even kindly, and far from matched his real nature. He was a likeable man when he wanted to be liked. But it was only one of his tricks. He could be all sorts of men according to the brief he had to follow.

  He contemplated the bowl of hyacinths. The last time the bowl had been full of potted bronze chrysanthemums. The lower leaves of two of the plants had been infested with green fly. The last time it had been a woman who had come in from the night, raincoated, her face silk-scarf swathed to the eyes. This time Bush felt that it would be a man. The first time, and now again, the code name ‘Trader’ had been used, and the press always referred to the ‘Trader Kidnappings’. The thought of the publicity, deliberately instigated by ‘Trader’, angered Bush. The first kidnapping had been successful and the woman had gone free. Anyway, if they had grabbed her, broken the protocol laid down and taken the risk that the stated threat would not be carried out, he was sure that they would have got little from her. This time the man would come out of vanity, masculine pride, or even an impresario’s delight in knowing his own creation.

  Grandison was across the hall, near the door. He was studying a framed map of the school and its training areas. Bush knew that every detail on the map was being effortlessly absorbed, programmed into his chief’s mind. Grandison turned and came over.

  He was a great pirate of a man—a wooden leg and black eye patch all that were missing. In place of the patch he wore a monocle, its red silk cord looping down over the lapel of his thick tweed jacket. His bulk was enormous, but never clumsy. He was black-haired and black-bearded, and his broad face was time-creased and experience-scarred from fifty years of hard, violent and joyous living. He was friendly now. When he wanted he could make Privy Counsellors sweat under the armpits. He had the ear of those who mattered. He had dined once a fortnight with each of the Prime Ministers under whom he had served.

  Bush said, “History about to repeat itself.”

  Grandison nodded. “It has to. Repetition is reproduction. Reproduction is survival. You know, of course, that this time it will be the man?”

  “Yes.”

  “What would be your bet for the third time?”

  “The third?”

  Grandison flicked a bushy eyelid and the monocle fell across his chest. “You should have got as far as that, Bush.” He nodded towards the washleather bag. “Last time and this— all preliminaries. ‘Trader’ himself sending a letter to the press each time—playing for maximum publicity up to a point. And what for? Just a handful of diamonds each time? Twenty thousand pounds’ worth? Too modest. Nobody plays this kind of game for that kind of money. Naturally, you’ve realised that there must be a third time.”

  “Frankly, no.” Nobody in the department ever called Grandison ‘sir’. It was his own edict.

  “Then you bloody well ought to have done.” The voice was good-natured. “When we’ve finished with this little lot, put a cushion under your arse and work me out the logical projection.” He grinned and re-set his monocle. “If it’s not right I’ll send you to the salt mines. Want a tip?”

  “Well, I . . .”

  “An idle word ‘Well’. The human sigh. The grunt of delay. Just say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.”

  “Yes.”

  “Publicity, the power of the press, public opinion.” He stared past Bush at the Queen’s portrait. “Fascinating. You just use other people’s weapons and their piddling fears about their own status, and the world is at your feet.”

  On the reception desk at the door the telephone rang. It was answered by Bush’s immediate superior, the Deputy Head of the department, Sangwill, his horn-rimmed spectacles pushed back on his forehead, a cigarette lodged in the corner of his mouth.

  “Yes?” He listened, pursing his lips, playing a soft tattoo on the desk with his free hand. “All right. Hold the car there on the way out.”

  Bush smiled. At the gate they all knew the car had to be held. Not that it would help. Sangwill liked to reinforce the obvious. That’s why he sat mostly on a cushion. Rond-de-cuir. Bureaucrat. A nice, gentle man, Sangwill, the caretaker that every department had to have.

  Sangwill turned to them. “Coming up now. From what they said—prepare yourself for a giggle.” He sighed and flicked his glasses down.

  Through the half-glass door of the hall Bush saw the car pull up. It was a hired car, the firm’s advertising plaque a lighted crescent on its roof. The headlight glare dropped to low beam. Grandison tipped his head to the door and Bush went out.

  March night. A strong westerly wind going, shaking the bare wistaria branches on the front of the building. No cloud. Stars like diamond chips. Moon in its first quarter.

  The man who got out of the car touched the night with pantomime.

  The car driver, one arm hooked over his door, watched, grinning to cover uneasiness, and called hoarsely, “Want me to wait, guv?”

  Bush answered for the visitor. “No.”

  They would hold the driver at the gate. They would squeeze everything they could out of him and it wouldn’t help a bit. The visitor watched
as the car drove away, then he turned and came up the steps.

  Bush logged him, detail by detail—five feet ten or eleven, slim build, easy mover. Everything was clear under the fierce glare of the overhead door light; black shoes indifferently polished, a length of grey flannel trousering and above that a wind-flapped, single-fronted raincoat. He had a black towelling scarf (the kind golfers and fishermen wear against rain round the neck) tight about his throat. Above all, crowning everything, he wore the face of pantomime—a papier-mache mask, a crude, red-painted, bulbous-nosed, fat-cheeked carnival face, grotesque with dark, drooping moustaches—a vulgar, moronic, leering front. Bush showed no surprise. He stepped aside, pushed the door open and the man went in. Inchwide elastic, caught at the sides of the mask, stretched across the back of the man’s head. The hair that showed was blond and long. Could be a wig. Bush made a note to try to check the colour of the wrist hairs when the visitor took his hands from his pockets. He would be wearing gloves, of course, but they might be short enough to reveal something.

  Coming in from the freshness of the night air, the sweet, bready smell of the hyacinths was strong in the hall. Grandison was on the far side of the low table, monocle screwed into his eye. Nothing on his face changed. Fantasy was no stranger in their lives. Sangwill stood below the Queen’s portrait. There was a raised movement of his pale eyebrows behind the thick rims of his spectacles. A joke-weary father humouring another family prank. The visitor took his right hand from his pocket. The left stayed where it was, and with it, Bush knew, there would be an automatic.

  Grandison said, “You’ve missed All Hallow’s Eve by a few months.” He wagged a long forefinger towards the washleather bag.

  The visitor said nothing. His left hand came out of the pocket holding an automatic. He put it on the edge of the bowl of hyacinths, where it was nearer to hand than four inches lower on the table. He did it neatly, not a bloom or leaf disturbed. The flower growth almost hid the weapon so that Bush could not identify it. Maybe one of the hidden cameras would get it. For a moment he was tempted to look up to the decorative ceiling boss to check the line.

  The man wore long black cotton gloves and they reached up under the raincoat sleeves. He picked up the washleather bag, pulled the toggled cords loose and tipped the diamonds onto the table. They were—as had been specified—uncut blue whites. They looked like nothing. Cutting and polishing would bring them to life. You could sell them, no questions asked, in hundreds of different markets. The visitor splayed the stones around with a gloved finger. He picked one up, rolled it casually in his hand, rocking it on the black palm, and then slid it back with the others. Slowly he put all the diamonds back in the bag.

  Grandison said, “Your trust in us is flattering.”

  The man made no reply. They all knew that no word would come from him, anymore than it had from the woman. No curt ‘Yes’ ‘No’ or ‘Maybe’ to be caught by the tapes, that might give a fractional vocal vibration of accent, national or regional, or the bare echo of social class. You could put a detail like that in Sangwill’s computer with a yeasty collection of other facts and out would come a few hundred samples that could be followed up and might lead to a rare identification. Not even in the helicopter would this man speak. He would do what the woman had done the first time, produce pencil and notepad and write the instructions in block letters, never letting the pilot handle the pad, and taking it with him when the trip was done. This man could fail only by his own mistakes. He was making none. His security lay in the power of death he held over another man . . . a man waiting now, somewhere, for release. He would have no cause to use that power. The men above Grandison had decided that.

  If the decision had been left solely to Grandison it would have been different. Other people’s deaths were commonplace. The thought of his own held no great concern for him. Whenever it was ordained it would come. Bush knew his philosophy well. Meet threats with thrusts and send messages of condolence to the families of innocent casualties. There is no sanity in any community, no true safety, the moment you acknowledge the imperatives of any tyranny, large or small. The world had got to learn that it was better to die than to be dishonoured, that evil could not be expunged either by prayer or payment. Only a sacrifice of life or lives could make living safe—and whether you lived safe or were sacrificed was the luck of the draw. Unchristian, of course. But for Grandison, himself and Sangwill and all the others in the department Christianity had long been relegated to a footnote in the first training manual. Man had outgrown it. It had served its purpose like the apposition of thumb and fingers. There was more to life now, whether you liked it or not, than the simple ability to pick bananas from a tree in the jungle. There was now a different kind of jungle slowly enfolding the whole world.

  Bush watched the washleather bag go into the right-hand pocket. The automatic was picked up and went in the other pocket. Ignoring them the man walked to the door. He pushed it open with his shoulder and held it, waiting. Bush went out past him, as he had once gone out past the woman.

  They went down a floodlit drive, turned into a pathway half dark with the black scribbles of leafless shrub shadows. Bush walked ahead, out onto the football field where the helicopter waited. A few moments later the machine took off. Its rotors flattened the tall grasses of the outfield as it rocked gently and then rose and headed eastwards. The navigation lights winked until it hit a thousand feet and then they were switched off.

  Bush went back to the hall. In his absence a tray of drinks had been brought in and rested on the table. Grandison had dropped into a black leather armchair beyond the fireplace. A large glass of neat whisky was perched close to him on a side table. He was slumped deep in the chair, reading a small leather-bound, gold-tooled book. Wherever he moved there was always a book in his pocket. He had removed himself from them now because for two, three or more hours there was nothing for him to do. Sangwill, a long, weak whisky and water at his side, was at the reception desk on the telephone to the gate, listening, grunting now and then and making notes with his free hand.

  Bush helped himself to a whisky and soda. Sangwill would be getting the driver’s details. The plaque on its roof-top had said—Riverdale Motor Hire—Reading. Their visitor, Bush guessed, had come out of the station or appeared on the corner of a street, flagged the car and got in. . . . He didn’t pursue conjecture any further. Sangwill would get it all, and none of it would help. He found himself a chair, slumped in it, took a long pull at his drink and then stared up at the ceiling and began to think about the third time. He was conscientious and ambitious and successful. With every year that passed he found himself raising his sights higher.

  * * * *

  George Lumley stood at the low bedroom window of his cottage and stooped a little to look through to see what the morning was doing. It was, he thought, doing a typical basinful of March stuff. Stinking. Rain coming down like stair-rods. A mad west wind banging away at the old elms down the side of the field track. He watched a handful of rooks tossed and sucked up above the trees by the wind. A swirl of burnt paper scattering across the grey sky. Poetic. He felt good and alive. Early morning sex did that for him always. Not Blanche. She just flopped back. Three deep sighs and she was away for another hour’s shut-eye.

  He turned back to the bedroom and looked at her. He ought to get a bigger bed. She was a diagonal dozer. Pick one up at a sale, somewhere. A mahogany monster that you could lose yourself in. She could sleep diagonal, vertical or horizontal then. All the points of the compass. Trouble was they’d never get it up the stairs. Floppy woman, he thought. Everything about Blanche flopped beautifully. Except her mind. By God, he had to give her that. He leaned over and kissed her right nipple then gently tucked the smooth mass of her breast back into the shelter of the green silk nightdress. She gave a small noise, a puppy whimper, and smiled in her sleep.

  He went down the steep awkward stairs. When he had money he would put in a funicular. Albert slept on the mat at the bottom. There was no
movement as he stepped over the black and white, pint-sized, nondescript animal. Great watchdog, Albert. A burglar would have to jump on him to find trouble. Cunning bastard, Albert, too. There’d be no movement from him until he heard the grating of the opener on the can of dog food. Lucky Albert, too. All you had to do was wag an occasional tail and lick a hand and you were housed, fed and coddled for the rest of your life. Like me with Blanche. Yes, but that was only temporary. Everything was only temporary. Always had been. That was the trouble.

  He whistled to himself and went into the kitchen. His domain. George Lumley, gastronome—overboil an egg and burn toast with the best of them. Another Escoffier, that was him. What sauce! He laughed aloud at his own poor joke and began his chores.

  He was a big, clumsy man admitting to being near forty, and certain that he had the best years of his life to come. Success for George was always around the corner. The shape success should take changed constantly, tantalising him like a mirage. The only way he would ever be able to pin it down would be when he had money. Real money. Not the piddling remittance through lawyers from a family that had written him off long ago, a process that had begun years back when he’d been caught in flagrante delicto with the young matron at his third-rate public school and had been kicked out.

  Sometimes, after a drink or two, George would try to remember her in detail, but he never could. Blonde, brunette? God alone knew. All he really vividly remembered was that it hadn’t been much good. Willing, but maladroit like a raw stallion put to its first mare. Never mind. Good times were coming. He’d read it in his horoscope in the Daily Mail yesterday.

  While he was waiting for the coffee to heat up, he plugged in his electric razor and shaved and hummed a little tune to himself. Like Pooh, he thought. Had there ever really been a time, he puzzled, when his mother had read that to him? She hadn’t been as tough as the others, but tough enough. Anyway she had had no chance against the old man. Alive still, the old man. And still kicking. The shave finished, he examined his face in the slip of kitchen mirror.